Police fired tear gas at rioters hurling gasoline bombs and chunks of marble today during Greece's largest anti-austerity demonstration in six months — part of a 24-hour general strike that was a test for the nearly four-month old coalition government and the new spending cuts it plans to push through.

WBAI's Andrea Sears spoke with Costas Panayotakis, associate professor of sociology at the New York City College of Technology and author of “Remaking Scarcity: From Capitalist Inefficiency to Economic Democracy”. He says the people of Greece have already been subjected to two austerity programs in the past three years.